So, I'm not quite sure how your deck is going to play. However, I suspect you'll have a lot of creatures during the mid-game. I think you should consider running
Shamanic Revelation
and/or
Slate of Ancestry
.

Veil of Summer
is one of the more absurdly good cards printed recently. I highly suggest running it in any green deck -- it's a cantrip that protects your guys from counters and spot removal. There're some really odd niche-cases it's good in, too, like against
Bitter Ordeal
.

I don't think
Path to Exile
is very good. In general, ramping your opponents in a format with forty life and several enemies trying to do busted things is a dangerous move. I like your
Swords to Plowshares
a lot more.

Finally, depending on your meta, there're a few green enchantments you should strongly consider:
Choke
,
Carpet of Flowers
and
Compost
are all super powerful, given the right meta. Blue and black are the two most common colors in EDH, so you can be pretty certain you'll be facing one or both most of the time.

1 week ago

What I suspect is going on is that your opponents are doing a lot on the aggro front. There're a few ways you can deal with this.

First, you can discourage your opponents from attacking you.
Propaganda
is probably the best-known card for this, but there're plenty of others.
No Mercy
comes to mind -- it was one of my favorite cards when I was a kid.
Crawlspace
and
Silent Arbiter
are good ways to limit the number of attackers an opponent can pressure you with, and assuming no trample, you likely can just chump away whatever they're hitting you with. Finally,
Meekstone
will keep the most dangerous ones tapped. I think any of these will probably be better than
AEtherize
, especially since none of them are 'single use.'

You also seem to be light on wrath effects.
Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow
ninjutsu ability gets around commander tax, meaning he'll really only ever cost to put down -- so feel totally free to wrath with him on the board.
Kindred Dominance
strikes me as being way too much mana to do real damage in the earlier stages of the game, especially if you're fighting a bunch of aggro decks.
Damnation
is, I think, preferable here, as are
Toxic Deluge
and
Cyclonic Rift
.
Damnation
and
Toxic Deluge
being four and three mana, respectively, means you can conceivably cast them before you're getting smacked but while your opponent has a summoning-sick army.
Cyclonic Rift
's overload ability IS seven mana, but being instant speed makes up for that (at least in my opinion).

If you include wrath effects, non-creature token producers are worth including -- they'll give you creatures to 'return' with Yuriko's ability while surviving the wrath themselves.
Bitterblossom
is the best here, though like most good cards, it's relatively expensive. Other options include
Breeding Pit
,
Graf Harvest
(if you wrath Yuriko to the 'yard, you can exile him to the command zone to create a token, then ninjutsu him out on the token when it attacks),
Spawning Pit
and
Volrath's Laboratory
(which can make ninjas).

If you decide to run some of the above cards, they should replace your one-for-one removal cards. In general, EDH games will have you facing three opponents, and therefore three times the number of cards you have. You therefore want cards that will effect more than a single card your opponent has.
Hero's Downfall
and
Grasp of Darkness
may be great in one-on-one formats, but in EDH they simply don't pack enough punch. (One interesting exception to the 'limit your one-for-ones' rule is the inclusion of counter magic. In general, I think of counterspells in EDH as more than one-for-ones, since A) they can save more than one of your cards if you counter something like
By Force
or
Fire Covenant
, and B) they can stop combos cold, making your opponent waste all the combo pieces s/he/they cast before the countered card.)

I have some non-combat related suggestions, too -- I hope I'm not being presumptuous in offering them:

I'm sure you've noticed how awesome your
Treasure Cruise
is: being eight on a Yuriko flip but often costing around two or three mana at most to cast is pretty busted. There're other delve cards to consider, though I do think it is likely more than one or two in a list will occasionally cause issues when delve gets in its own way.
Dig Through Time
is a primary candidate here, as it is also eight mana, but it also happens to be an instant (yay!).
Temporal Trespass
also comes to mind.

In magic, there're a bunch of alternate casting-cost cards that work well with your general, as their CMC is usually pretty high. Unfortunately, some of them are expensive -- I'll just mention them, in case you have more money to blow than I typically do:
Force of Will
and
Commandeer
.
Spinning Darkness
,
Gush
and
Misdirection
are all more affordable and alright cards in their own right, though they are significantly less powerful.

Nexus of Fate
is a pet card of mine, and I think it'd be genuinely good here. It hits for seven, but doesn't 'really' make you tap out since if it resolves you get another untap step right away.

A creature to consider is
Baleful Strix
. Having deathtouch and flying make it really hard to block, and if you keep ninjutsu-ing it back to your hand you can keep casting it for the draw trigger.

Cantrips are good. I suggest running
Preordain
in addition to your
Ponder
and
Brainstorm
. It's not as good as the two you have (in this deck), since it can only leave one card on top of your deck for Yuriko triggers, but I still think it's worth playing. As a turn one play, it's gonna be hard to beat. (Of course,
Ponder
does still beat it.)

Gaea's Cradle
is amazing, but also about the same price as a used liver. For that reason, you may have more luck running something like
Growing Rites of Itlimoc
Flip, which is essentially the same card (though slightly slower), and much more affordable. Pairing this with
Deserted Temple
results in instant fun.

Your general has an
Overrun
effect stapled onto him, so I'm assuming that's how you generally plan to win. However, my experience has always been that if your commander is your only win-condition, your opponents will learn that and keep him off the board more or less indefinitely. I suggest running one or two alternative but similar effects:
Triumph of the Hordes
and/or
Craterhoof Behemoth
.
Triumph of the Hordes
has the advantage of not actually needing a full board to be lethal -- in EDH, 10 points of poison still kills a player.
Craterhoof Behemoth
is around $30 nowadays, but it happens to be sorta an insanely good card -- especially if you tutor it out with
Natural Order
or similar effects.

One of the main weaknesses of 'go wide' creature decks is that they tend to be soft to mass-removal. The best way to counteract this is by keeping a full hand, meaning that card-advantage is at a premium.
Slate of Ancestry
is a great way to keep generating advantage from a full board, and if you hold up mana you can activate it in response to a
Supreme Verdict
or similar effect.
Beast Whisperer
is an elf I'm surprised to see you aren't running.
Skyshroud Poacher
, while not an elf himself, can grab you your duders without having to bother casting them -- if he and a few other cards are what you have left in hand after a wrath effect, he can help rebuild your board.

1 week ago

So, I happen to be very much in accord with RNR_Gaming in the feeling that one-mana mana-dorks will greatly improve this deck. In my experience, in a four player game, people will have a lot of other threats to worry about than mana-dorks; and if the deck is built well, with an appropriate amount of card-draw, it'll recover from a board wipe rather well. That being said, if you want to go the route of enchantment ramp, there're a bunch not in the deck that you should consider.
Utopia Sprawl
is a favorite of mine, especially if you pair it with an
Arbor Elf
.
Wild Growth
,
Elvish Guidance
and (in the right meta)
Carpet of Flowers
can all also produce but-tons of mana.

Part of the reason I, and I suspect RNR_Gaming suggest dorks is because, being green, you have access to a lot of creature ramp that can replace artifact ramp. If that is done, you can run cards like
Collector Ouphe
or
Stony Silence
; in competitive metas, these two cards can often times change the course of a game more than any other card. I love artifact ramp dearly --
Kess, Dissident Mage
as Storm is my favorite EDH deck -- but it is simply not as good as one mana, dork-based ramp that dodges artifact hate.

In my experience (perhaps your is different),
Path to Exile
is really bad in EDH. In general, ramping opponents as a side-effect of removal in a format filled with high-cost, high-payoff strategies is going to be actively dangerous. Sometimes,
Path to Exile
can be good for removing blockers; however, there are better ways to do this, such as
Taunting Elf
or even just
Renegade Tactics
, which has the added bonus of not costing you a card. Same goes for
Settle the Wreckage
.

Your land-count is very high. If you want to spew out lands, consider
Exploration
and/or
Burgeoning
. These can help you get out of the gate much faster than your opponents, and work especially well with your Karoo lands, like
Gruul Turf
.

2 weeks ago

I'm not sure that I mentioned you as being "self-unreliant" (that doesn't sound like terminology I'd use, but I digress), but it's more along the lines that you actually, at times, sound pushy about asking others for suggestions on cuts; like you refuse to make the cuts yourself. All I would recommend is that when people make suggestions for cuts, be grateful for the ones they do give you, take all under advisement, and in the end, the final decision is yours to make. Instead of always asking for cuts, make some suggestions of your own for cuts, and get some other opinions on those. That way, we help you, and you help you. Hopefully, that helps some. ;)

Now, going back to
Admiral Beckett Brass
, and the ever-thought-provoking question of when to run powerful spells, and when not to. The answer is, really, it's up to you. But, let me run down my reasoning for why I suggested those cuts for that deck:

You were asking for quite a few cuts, so I looked at what was the least necessary for the deck to run. I viewed it as a more casual, fun deck, and it didn't appear that there was that one card you needed to tutor for in order for you to win or "go off" with something. When I'm cutting cards in decks, I'll look at how many tutors I run, and decide if I really need them for that deck. Again, a casual tribal deck doesn't scream out to me that it needs to run the best tutor in the game to win. I had the same thought process with
Mana Drain
. It's a powerful card, and I certainly don't own one, and I didn't see it as a high priority for that deck of yours to run. If you find yourself playing at a table with a bunch of 5 power level decks and bust out the
Mana Drain
, it might be a real downer. But again, it's your choice to run; just ask yourself if that's what the deck needs or wants, especially when making cuts.

I didn't view that deck as a competitive style of deck, set up to be a high power level deck. With that in mind, two high-powered cards like that seemed out of place.

So, with that in mind, if you plan on building a Dimir deck with a bit higher power level, and with some combo pieces you need to tutor up in order to win, then that's where I start to make room for those cards. I'd think about running a
Force of Will
in something like that, where I've got to counter something and am all tapped out, or lose the game. Stakes are a bit higher, so I run the more powerful stuff.

I get it, I like to play my strong cards, too. Hell, when I first built my
Meren of Clan Nel Toth
deck, I packed it with 6 tutors and
Doomsday
. The more I played it, the more I found I did't like tutoring up the same wincon every game. Also, I play with my two young sons a lot, and I want them to stay interested and keep playing with me. If I insist on tutoring and comboing off on turn 4 every time we play, then soon they don't want to play. I can't have that. If I played at my LGS, and the group was pretty tough, I'd consider changing that approach, but for now, I'm happy enough with my
Demonic Tutor
,
Vampiric Tutor
,
Diabolic Intent
, and
Natural Order
sitting in my binders.

I hope that helps. I'll see you around the boards. Feel free to drop in here, it just may be some time before I get back with you, depending on how crazy life is being.

A lot of your dudes are gonna die in a sacrifice deck. In order to get card-advantage out of this, you should run
Grim Haruspex
,
Midnight Reaper
and/or
Harvester of Souls
. Unfortunately, these don't trigger with token-deaths, but they'll still help a lot.
Deathreap Ritual
is similarly powerful and triggers with token deaths, though it only triggers once a turn.

Red-green decks tend to poop out a lot of creatures and go lightly on the spells.
Slate of Ancestry
is an EXCELLENT way to recoup card advantage, provided you have a critical mass of creatures on the table.
Commune with Lava
is another excellent pseudo-card-draw thingy. If your games are usually four player games,
Decimate
is frequently a four-for-one, meaning that it's another good source of permanent-count advantage.
Shamanic Revelation
is another good draw-spell. If you have fat enough creatures,
Rishkar's Expertise
may merit an include.
Hull Breach
is a great two-for-one.

Oftentimes, green-red decks win through a combination of Stax pieces and aggro cards.

Potential Stax Pieces:

Blood Moon
/
Magus of the Moon
: If you craft your land base carefully, you can make these into a near asymmetrical effect. A lot of decks benefit from greedy mana bases in EDH, and these are a way to punish that.

Natural Order occurrence in decks from the last year

Commander / EDH:

All decks: 0.03%

Green: 0.44%

Golgari: 0.09%

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